I interpreted this dream as people being zombies but there were varying degrees of them. Some were just sick and others were full on "Dawn of the Dead" style. I associated the sickness with covid (probably correlated with my work) so I guess this dream took place far into the pandemic.
I am in a huge city with people I know to be my coworkers (I only recognize 2 from real life). We are on a project studying the side effects of this sickness (let's assume covid). For some reason we all drive separately and I am in dire need of gas. It is getting late and I know I need to hurry because in classic fashion, the worst of the infected come out at night. I pull into a gas station and begin coming up with an exit strategy. The gas station has a convenient mart located inside it so I think that I'll be safe in there. I decide that the best play is to hide in the shelving until daylight, worst case scenario.
This city has a curfew counter to warn people that goes off. I go into the convenience store to take shelter. The interior looks identical to June Conn School of Dance, a dance studio I attended when I was younger. I go up to a second floor and Elizabeth is there with a small girl, Robert, and a bunch of other dance moms and their daughters. Elizabeth is acting weird and I hear her say that she thinks she has covid. I know time is short!
I'm worried Elizabeth is going to turn and there is no good place for Robert and me to go. I tell Robert we need to go through the air vents and maybe we can make it to the car and sleep there (terrible idea by the way; I've seen enough scary movies to know better). I insist that this is the only way. Elizabeth's eyes turn bloodshot. Robert and I look outside and see people running and screaming. I know zombies are out hunting people. These "zombies" don't bite people, however. They just have to touch or scratch you to infect you.
I have not idea if Robert and I made it out but I remember a part where one of my "coworkers" was raiding my car at nightfall, searching for my research papers for the cure and I got really angry because I was afraid the zombies were going to come for us.